SyncSignature: A Simple, Efficient, Parallelizable Framework for Tree Similarity Joins

This paper introduces SyncSignature, the first fully parallelizable algorithmic framework for tree similarity joins under edit distance. SyncSignature makes use of implicit-synchronized signature generation schemes, which allow for an efficient and parallelizable candidate-generation procedure via hash join. Our experiments on large real-world datasets show that the proposed algorithms under the SyncSignature framework significantly outperform the state-of-the-art algorithm in the parallel computation environment. For datasets with big trees, they also exceed the state-of-the-art algorithms by a notable margin in the centralized/single-thread computation environment. To complement and guide the experimental study, we also provide a thorough theoretical analysis for all proposed signature generation schemes.